


Intangible Cities

by miabicicletta



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-26
Updated: 2011-06-26
Packaged: 2017-10-20 19:25:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/216290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miabicicletta/pseuds/miabicicletta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Leoben does not necessarily believe everything Laura Roslin says when she describes to him the cities of man, but the envoy of the Cylons does continue listening to the schoolteacher-president with greater attention and curiosity than he shows to almost any other human."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Intangible Cities

**Title:** Intangible Cities  
 **Author:**  miabicicletta   
 **Summary:**  "Leoben does not necessarily believe everything Laura Roslin says when she describes to him the cities of man, but the envoy of the Cylons does continue listening to the schoolteacher-president with greater attention and curiosity than he shows to almost any other human."  
 **Characters/Pairing:** Laura, Leoben. Adama/Roslin, if you’re looking closely.  
 **Rating:** K  
 **Wordcount:** ~3300  
 **Notes:** One of my favorite books is Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino. This has been kicking around in my head for a while, and if you know the book, you'll see this is a not-so-thinly-veiled homage to it.

\---

Out of all of the One True God’s creations, Number Two is the most curious model. Leoben longs for insight into the way of things, to know the path of the righteous. To discover, if possible, how he will make his way unto Him; how best He can be served.

Leoben does not need altars or temples or places prescribed in ancient texts to exercise his faith. Solitude is his only requirement. In the quiet of a small, light-filled room, he offers many prayers in his second life, all full of questions, and his existence is in wait of the many answers he asks for.

\---

Humankind fascinates him. They are creatures of such wide and disparate habits: their kindnesses; their cruelties; their violent bursts of creative energy. They commit endless tragedies that make them so blandly similar and unknowable all the same.

Leoben yearns to learn more of them and their civilization, these erstwhile parents in whose shape he and his brothers and sisters have been made. But books are unhelpful, full of tawdry tales or simplistic, half-hearted moralizing, and in the street, his face betrays him. All those he approaches in the market, near a tent, at the factory, all either shy away or speak gibberish before him, their simple minds clouded by fear.

As ever, Kara remains silent as a stone.

\---

A day comes when, in the course of his exploration, Leoben passes one of the school tents belonging to the human populace. It is a claptrap, cobbled together thing, assembled in the vain shape of a more solid structure. Pitiful, he cannot help but think, though he does understand the underlying point of it, why they have bothered to go to the trouble. Children are the hope of the future, after all.

The prophet stands at the head of the classroom delivering a lecture on Colonial history and his eyes are drawn to her in rapture.

God is great, Leoben whispers, and listens with reverence to the Heavenly Father speak with Laura Roslin’s tongue.

The next day, he summons the prophet to him.

\---

And the Cylon says, Tell me of the Colonies.

Laura Roslin hesitates. Why, she asks, and does not sit upon the comfortable chair that is presented, eying it with with contempt.

I wish to know more of you, the Cylon says. He gestures to the windows, beyond. This place is a harp of broken strings, a drum with nothing to strike it. To know a people, one must know their places, their customs. You have so few.

The human leader's anger is white hot and lightning. And what for? she snaps. You destroyed our _places_ , our _customs_. If it is history you seek, there are twelve worlds of it half a universe away. You’ll find it buried under the ash and bones of my people. Find your history there.

The Cylon smiles, serene. Tell me, Laura Roslin. Tell me about the cities of man.

\---

For a time, Laura is silent. She studies Leoben in the strange, sparse temple. His demeanor is confidant. Arrogant even.

When she opens her mouth to refuse him, she is shocked by the tales that tumble forth in place of her fury.

\---

_The city of Tawa was called the City of Walls. In the old days, the Tribe of Sagittarius created strict and unyielding laws to govern their society, and only in the confines of home and hearth could propriety be cast aside. Bound by such an austere coda, it naturally followed that the wilder hearts of Saggitaron sought out the rare opportunities when they might lay down their burdens and, for a moment, live closer to human men and women than to the gods they so revered._

_In Tawa one could find all manner of secrets. The child who slinks off when he is not watched. Lovers embracing behind closed doors. The man thought a fool, yet wiser than a thousand scholars, left to his forbidden books and his shadows..._

_Brick by brick, Tawa segmented itself. Again...again...again._

_Only through the building of walls did Tawa contain universes._

\---

_Heim was a city of visitors. Even those born and raised in the ice blue Aquarian snow, when asked of their heritage, could only respond “Oh, no, I am not staying. I only live here...” One could hardly blame the resident of Heim, for it inspired little and left few memories._

_Where other cities were composed of winding boulevards and riverwalk palaces, of halls and fairgrounds and plazas, Heim situated itself upon a tiny, narrow latticeworks of utilitarian streets and economic structures. A city of pragmatists, dreaming of ordered Euclidian planes, the laws of nature, the Golden Mean._

_Beyond the perfectly demarcated borders, there were no mountains to celebrate. No seas, no rivers nor cliffs. Heim had only snow, in a thousand colors and textures, all with different meaning, and the people of Heim could read the snow as a book. The drifts and wind and patterns on the six-edged window panes spoke volumes to those learned men and women of Aquaria._

_When the short, strange summer came, none knew what to do with him or herself._

\---

_There are some who said that the city of Hypatia was born of blood and war. Untrue, others claimed; the wars came after, they said. The Families came first, and laid the foundations of Hypatia on things much deeper than blood or cubits._

_Hypatia, foremost, was built upon oaths._

_Pride, more than any mineral or stone, was Tauron’s great wealth, and this was true of the tribe of Taurus long before the Ha’la’tha made their mark upon the worlds. Thus the city was a place of grand and opulent things: balustrades, moats, towers. Walls, flanked with turrets, high enough that at the height of noon they might block out the sunlight. Arenas where enemies once bled their anger and animosity in open combat._

_Resources were few on the dry, dusty plateaus of the northern plains, and after those first, long centuries following the Exodus from Kobol, a handful of families controlled them all. The rivalries that grew from the bitter red earth were fierce. It was not long before the people of some clans began to mark their bodies with words and emblems to show where their allegiances fell. They were not the words of their faith, as the Tribe of Gemenon or Saggitarius had done in the old days, but marks of their heritage: symbols of their fathers, their mothers, their children...their enemies. Centuries passed and families expanded to clans. The clans became neighborhoods, the neighborhoods became gangs._

_In the end, the words and symbols that marked Hypatia’s sons and daughters were written in ink that was always infused with blood._

\---

_The City of the Gods was left on Kobol and there the gods stayed. But Oranu, the city of temples, was fashioned from marble and porphyry and mother of pearl, shining bright enough for the Gods to see in Elysium. Though they were no less pious than the Saggitarons, the Gemenese had a taste for extravagance, and their temples were as palaces._

_The Book of the Exodus says that upon reaching the Twelve Worlds, three leaders of the Tribe of Gemini shared an identical dream of Hera, who lead them through the streets of a great city. When the leaders awoke, they woke with fire. Believing they had been tasked with divine purpose, they set about raising a city fit for the Queen of the Gods._

_The language of dreams makes for poor translation, and though the leaders recalled many magnificent things -- temples carved into white-faced cliffs, beacons beheld for a hundred miles -- it was a city unfit for mortals. Faced with conflicting images, the leaders constructed streets with no end. Stairs that lead nowhere. Houses with windows but no doors._

_In their interpretation of the divine, Oranu became a sacrilege, and it was not until the Kobol Colleges were built a thousand years after that the city began to flourish with more than than religious fervor._

_The chief export of Gemenon, it must be said, was atheism._

\---

Leoben does not necessarily believe everything Laura Roslin says when she describes the cities built by man, but the envoy of the Cylons does continue listening to the schoolteacher-president with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other human.

\---

_Gaoth was called the city of songs. On a the darkest night, in the farthest field, one could hear music filtering across the wheat, trickling across the rivers and lighting over canals. In Gaoth, it was said that even the dogs knew how to dance, and that the unhappiest man on all of Aerilon was he who could carry ten stones but not a tune._

_Uncountable ballads for beautiful country girls and hymns to the bravest of soldiers, yes, but there were songs for every moment and every thing, under every sun, in the Twelve Worlds. There were odes to plums, and to plowshares. To morning tea and the smell of grass and peat on a warm spring afternoon. Life, local metaphor went, was a melody, and life’s inherent struggle lay in finding one’s own rhythm._

_In an empty street stood a forgotten guitar, a lonely fiddle, a drum. No matter. The musicians had only gone for a drink, a smoke. Their tools of mirth were safe, for every citizen of Gaoth made music of his or her own, with instruments all their own: Coins in the hand; a pane of glass; footfalls upon a set of stairs, rising to an empty house._

\---

_The city of Hades was a city of myths. It was easy to see Canceron and its megacities as a world of problem. Certainly Hades embodied the planet’s myriad tragedies in its dire poverty and widespread violence. But it was a world of legends, where ghosts and heroes walked side by side with merchants and beggars. Hades was starved for everything: Food, water, infrastructure, power. Starved for all things but one._

_For all the nourishment the mouths of Hades went wanting for, they never lacked for stories._

_One legend told of a boy with the voice of an angel and fingers like the wind. If he ever lived, his name was forgotten, but thieves still spoke of this artful dodger, whose lightning hands and sincerest charms were so skilled they could have been called beautiful._

_It was said he died for a woman, which goes is either true and pitiful, or make believe and romantic. Myths, of course, are only half the way to halfway true at best._

_As were all tales told in Hades._

\---

_In Luminere the people were concerned with pleasure above all things. Exclusively so, it seemed, especially to those from other Colonies. The pace of life was so different from other worlds. Slower. Gentler. Passion was reserved for art; for food; for love. Never one’s work or in the service of fortune. Young people, an old man, perhaps the Mayor, even, would doze at half past one under a tree in the park without anyone batting an eye. A fisherman could not punt down the river Isis without passing a pair of lovers, and to do so was almost always seen as a bad luck._

_For all their pleasures, the people of Luminere were never satisfied. There was always a better wine to be had than the vintage on their lips; dinner should have been procured at the bistro in the next arrondissement. The local Pyramid team had played better the year before, or would the year next, when a new forward would be shipped in from Scorpia or Gemenon. Younger, faster. Sweeter, bolder. Always something to want when wants were chiefly served. Still, it could not be said that in Luminere people knew nothing of love, for every citizen sought his or her desire before every other thing._

_And so, somewhat ironically, it was said that Luminere was the city of lovers, and that he who fell in love there would find happiness forever._

\---

At this the Leoben grins, pressing his fingers together.

And you, Laura Roslin, the Cylon says, his voice winking with information unspoken. Have you known one such luminous lover?

In that moment she suspects that rumor has reached the Cylon’s ears. Rumor is what she hopes for, and truth that which she deeply fears.

Me? Laura lies, feigning ignorance. I never have.

Which is true enough.

\---

_Themis was said to be the city of justice, but was better known for the bartering of souls. No deal was fair, and every sentence was a carefully orchestrated arrangement. There was a calculus for mercy in the city of bribes._

_Some generations before, when Libran began to flourish with academies and scholarly guilds, some city planners designed Themis as an immensely walkable garden. There were no roads, no vehicles. Only paths._

_In Themis, it was a popular legend held by criminals and innocents alike (a legend cheerlessly encouraged by lawyers and judges), that exactly one route across the city existed for every crime, and that if the judge for the case in question happened to stroll the down the correct series of paths and bridges and boardwalks and promenades the morning before the verdict, one’s crime would be commuted. The same was said of appeals and paroles and all manner of legal proceedings. Ridiculous, of course, but it was the hope of many prisoners without the means to buy off the right players in their short or endless stay on Libran._

_Such was Themis. City of the beautiful lies._

\---

_Queenstown was a city of games. No person ever lived in Queenstown who did not jockey for the best seat on a tram or outdo his fellow runner up a stair, across a bridge, down the road. The city hummed with a jovial spirit of friendly competition. The cab driver raced to find the fastest route to his destination; the butcher sought to satisfy his customers with the tenderest, choicest of cuts. Even the temple keepers, those most reverent and sincere of believers, were engaged in a solemn but fierce bout to win the favor of their congregation._

_Of course, above all else came Pyramid. A past-time on all the worlds, yes, but in Queenstown, Pyramid surpassed even the gods in devotion. For a handful of days each year, the most affable and generous of the city's populace were overcome with hatred for their fellows citizens. Half the city supported one team; the other half, their rivals._

_And so, whole districts of the city were pitted against others. Lifelong friends became the fiercest of enemies. More than one engagement was broken by the outcome of a game. Few Picon natives could stomach a career on the planet of their birth, for it inspired as much contempt as adoration, and thus Picons great gamesmen and women hardly ever wore the colors of their home Colony._

_An irony that was not lost on the city of Queenstown, but they were far too set in their ways to change._

\---

_Celeste. Once, long ago, it was called the Gem of the Worlds. And once, long ago, it was._

_At night for half the year, the stars were obscured by a ring of rock and ice. As it traveled through the system, the light of the sun caught the rock and the ice, high in orbit,, and for those months the night was full of gleaming, brilliant points of light in a trail so close that they seemed to hover brightly just beyond the tops of the trees. Seeming, almost, that if you reached high enough, you could pluck a jewel from the sky, as a god might._

_Perhaps that is why the people of Celeste began to fill the city with neon lights and glowing marquees. A tribute of sorts to the shining, familiar swath that gleamed so spectacularly above them. Billboards were erected, high, spotlit buildings that scraped the sky. Fireworks illuminated every corner of the city so that night became brighter even than day._

_At the time the Colonies fell, the lights of Celeste had long since obscured the heavens, and the only stars to be seen were those under the spotlights, weaving a shadowless path beneath a radiant marquee._

_The skies had been forgotten._  
  
\---

_In Boskirk, the motto emblazoned on the royal crest of the house of Virgon was but three small words. Honor. Ambition. Triumph. The words were inscribed everywhere -- from manhole covers to the Houses of Parliament. Unsurprising, then, that, from Borkirk, the Virgonese once sought to control so many of the other worlds in our system._

_It’s inhabitants aspired to seize each moment of each day, to make it theirs, and theirs alone. So great was their desire that, in a sense, Boskirk was destroyed each day, only to be created again by its inhabitants the following morning. The flower market was never raised on the same street corner as the day before. The banners came down at dusk, were washed, dyed, blessed, and raised anew the following morning but only as a different banner, a new honorific. Shopkeepers never sold the same produce as they had the previous afternoon, and not even the machinist in his coveralls wore a single article of his attire two days inside the same week._

_To do so was to dishonor progress and the might of Virgon._

_And so the people of Boskirk lived with intention. Which is more than can be said of others.  
_

\---

At last Laura Roslin is silent.

Lost in the wide streets and long halls of her memory, Leoben does not doubt. Tell me of Caprica, he asks.

The president’s eyes are dark behind her glasses. I have already told you of Caprica City, she answers.

Leoben frowns. You have said nothing of this place.

Surely, the woman says, you who know us so well, who claim to know our place in this universe better than we know it ourselves, can see the that I have already told you everything I know of my home. That when I tell you about the fountains and arcades on Leonis and Virgon, I am telling you of other fountains and other arcades. Human memory is a palimpsest formed from a thousand other things all seen, touched, tasted, heard before an experience ever occurs. That which we know informs what we come to know. What we come to taste, to feel, to hear, to see. I was born in Caprica City. It was my home. In every place I have ever been, my memories have guided my impressions.

If I follow that logic, Leoben says, you never learn. You never change. All you do, all that you create, is merely a reinvention of some other thing.

The woman shakes her head. No. That is why you will never understand us, says Laura Roslin. Logic has nothing to do with it.

\---

New Caprica, Leoben decides, will be a city of triumph.

\---

New Caprica, Laura Roslin sighs, is the city of longings.

\---

Weary, Laura returns to her tent and collapses upon her bed, hugging her arms to ward off the chill.

Not one to dwell upon her unconscious wandering, when she falls into sleep and dreams of the cities of Earth, she remembers nothing of the places she sees.


End file.
